


Stayin' Undercover And Out of Sight

by Anonymous



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, High School AU, M/M, Sexual Tension, Sexy use of math, Teacher!Percival, past trauma, student!Theseus, teacher kinks all over the place
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-06-05 20:22:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15178607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: They stared at each other. All around them, students and teachers streamed up and down the hallway, nodding goodbyes to Mister Graves, slurping down jumbo coffees, hurrying towards the school doors.Mister Graves came to a stop - slowly, leather satchel dangling from his shoulder, jacket hooked around his finger and slung over his shoulder against the heat.No, not Mister Graves. Percival.Once the last bell rang, he was always Percival.Percival Graves is trying to do the right thing. Theseus Scamander is trying to fight for what he wants.





	Stayin' Undercover And Out of Sight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kallistob](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kallistob/gifts).



> Title from Secret Love by Hunter Hayes - I loved the cop wordplay, yeah. Hope you like it darling smol devil!

**Chapter 1**

Mister Graves’s lessons were a thing of beauty. 

Theseus had always had a vaguely distrustful interest in math: he saw the usefulness of it, the necessity of it when you build great wonderful things, like bridges and palaces and starships, or try to understand the physics stitching the world together. But he knew it wasn’t his path: Theseus’s path of life would involve something rougher, and made of earth and fatigue, and something he still wasn’t completely sure what was going to be. 

Still, the first day he dropped his fancy blue backpack provided by his fancy private high school on his desk and saw the new teacher waltz in the room, with the hip swag of a high couture model, Theseus found himself glued to his chair. And barely able to breathe. 

Mister Graves had landed in their lives halfway through Theseus’s junior year. Their former math teacher, Miss Simmons, had been a sweet, plum lady with blond curls and a benevolent smile, who treated her subject as a series of tidy equations copied from the textbook: it reminded Theseus of a small town marching band, music well-executed and comfortably plain. 

Graves’s mathematics, instead, was a sweeping Bach fugue: nervous fingers rippling up and down the numbers scribbled on the blackboard and eyes pinning you to your seat and questions opening into questions opening into even more questions. Asking for more and giving more, always. 

As with many things in his life, Theseus had been sure to be perfectly happy with Miss Simmons’s marching-band math. 

As with an equal number of things, when Graves came he realized nothing was further from the truth. 

Theseus gives a sigh. Out of the corner of his eye, he could glimpse a couple of his classmates with a classic Graves Face painted on their features: sweaty brow, hand a pink blur as it desperately tries to jot down every equation, eyes fixed on the lithe figure of their professor, full of longing and exasperation and despair. 

Monday, nine in the morning, a sleepy April sun painting the floor with spots of gold, a trigonometry topic which somehow evolved into basics of quantum physics: this class was the definition of pain in the ass. Still, as he curved over his own notebook, lines of text thick and black as tiny ant armies, Theseus couldn’t help a chuckle. 

He rarely felt happier than on the football ground, grass crushed under his stomping feet and heart hammering in his chest: Graves’s class was a close second. 

_And it’s not only about his class, isn’t it Theseus?_

The thought made Theseus’s fingers falter - the tip of his ballpoint shooting out, leaving a jagged line of ink in its wake. 

He bit his lip. Stole a glance at the first cause of that stumble. 

Percival Graves stood by the blackboard - always standing, never sitting when he was in teacher-mode - the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to the elbows, dark gaze fastened on the strings of brackets and numbers in front of him. He was wearing one of his tailored, expensive-looking suits - a complicated waistcoat-slacks combo in raven-dark blue; as he wrote on, his fingers danced like a pianist’s. In the soft spring light, his trimmed hair shone like black silk. 

For the time of a single heartbeat, Theseus wondered how it would feel to touch that hair. If it would be as soft as it looked, snagging fingers on its richness, cradling the warm spot on his nape as he- 

“Scamander. Are you still with us?” 

That voice brought Theseus back to his desk hard enough to make his bones shake with the impact. It jolted down the knobs of his spine, spreading shivers. 

If Mister Graves’s first superpower was his mind, and the second was his looks, his voice was definitely the third. 

“Uh?” 

The teacher had turned away from the board - leaning against the edge of his desk as he burned holes through Theseus’s skull. There was amusement flickering on his face, or maybe it was just the reflection of the spectacles. 

“I was wondering if you’re still here with us Earthlings, Scamander. You seemed rather fascinated with dust moles.” 

“Errr – no, I mean, of course, sir,” Theseus blurted out. “I’m always here for you.” That much, at least, was true. 

Graves said nothing. The classroom had fallen in a deep hush - air thick with anticipation, rustles of papers hastily tidied up and hushed whispers. 

Theseus watched him pull off the desk, and - God damn it all - _sauntered_ down his row of desks, till he stopped right in front of his. 

This close, the scent of Graves’s cologne wrapped around Theseus’s nostrils like a warm embrace - lilies and orange flowers, the lushness of it coating the inside of his mouth. It was intoxicating. 

“You’re one of my most promising students,” Graves said, crossing his arms. Eyes never leaving Theseus’s. “I’d hate not to be able to hold your attention.” 

_If you can just stop gliding around like a bloody super model on a catwalk,_ Theseus thought, _that’d make focus a lot easier._

He almost laughed. Hysterically. Instead, he curved his lips in an easy smile, all sun-freckles and cheeky charm. 

“Believe me, Mister Graves,” he said, daring to make his voice softer, daring to make it drop to the timbre that made it ring through his chest like a violoncello’s notes. “There are few things that can hold my attention better than your class.” 

_Better than you._

He didn’t say it, and yet the words hung tight between them. 

Mister Graves’s eyes fell to his lips, as they often did. It took him a moment to reply. 

“Then you’d have no problem giving your classmates a recap of the subject of today’s lesson, correct?” 

“Correct.” Theseus kept the smile firm in place, and placed his hands flat on the desk, straightening. Awareness of his body had become a burning thing: of the way the Animal Shelter shirt stretched across his chest, of Graves’s attention on him, of how delicate he looked in comparison to Theseus’s broad shoulders. 

Graves tilted his head. “Good. Go on, then, Mister Scamander.” 

“We were diving into one of the most controversial discovery of quantum physics,” Theseus said, no hesitation in his words. “Matter and anti-matter. The fact scientists are still working to figure how they interact, or how they coexist in the same universe. If they’re really as incompatible as people suppose they are.” 

Theseus knew he was walking a fine line: gaze still locked with Graves’s, the weight of it too exposed. 

Mister Graves narrowed his eyes. It felt like a way to hide a pained twitch. 

“Not incompatible, Mister Scamander,” he replied quietly, “but unable to exist in the same space. Deeply connected, but occupying different parts of the world.” A pause. “As they should.” 

Theseus felt his lungs collapse over themselves: chest tight, pressure rising. No one else saw it, he knew. None of his classmates would suspect, none of them would even imagine they were talking about anything but physics - their prodigious brainy quarterback and their hot math teacher being nerd buddies. To him, though, those words were one step from scandalous. Like brushing hands in the hallway - breathing in each other when he talked with him in Graves’s office. 

He loved it. It made him die a little, but Theseus loved it. And he let Graves know he loved it - smiling wider. 

“Oh, I don’t know, sir. New stuff’s always coming up. Theories die and crush and burn. Science changes. That’s the glorious thing about it, isn’t it?” 

Another twitch. The eyes behind the spectacles turn coffee-colored, unreadable. 

“Mathematics never changes.” 

“But we can change the way we look at it.” Theseus leaned closer. “You taught me that, didn’t you?” 

Graves’s lovely eyes stayed cold, flat as ice chips. Theseus was pretty sure he wanted nothing more than to throttle him. 

And yet- 

“Yes,” Mister Graves - _Percival_ \- finally said, so quiet his voice shivered down Theseus’s skin. “I did.” 

A couple rows from Theseus, someone snickered. There were soft gaping sounds, the murmurs of stirred interest. Just past Graves’s shoulder, he could glimpse Jacob’s round eyes with a giant question mark pulsing across them. 

The bell saved him. Saved Graves. Both. 

Mister Graves was back at his desk so fast the air _swooshed_ around him. He fumbled to open the clasps of his leather satchel, dropping everything he found on the desk in it - notes and papers to grade and atom models he probably either brought from home or stole from the chemistry lab. 

“Good,” he said: the class knowing better than leaving their desks before he said so. “That’s all for today. Don’t even come close to those cross tests on your textbook, they’re mortifying the soul and the mind of the thinking man. But do the problems I gave you, or I’ll make myself a suit with your flayed hides, okay?” 

They chuckled - even Tina, who used to pale to blue-shade whiteness the first few times they were subjected to Mister Graves’s particular brand of black irony. 

Theseus stood, slinging his backpack over his shoulder, and smiling for far more complicated reasons than his classmates. Weaving his way to the door, he stole a final look at Graves. He still had his face schooled into that perfect mask of pleasant blankness, but Theseus recognized the agitation in the subtle shaking of his hands. 

And in the fact he was slipping into his jacket not realizing it was inside out. 

_He was flustered._

Theseus thought it was too damn adorable. 

*** 

Percival Graves wasn’t a predictable man, but he loved tidiness. Routine, precision in all things. So it wasn’t hard for Theseus to track him down just after the last bell, and to turn the corner of the hallway he was walking down at the exact right time to cross his path - to make it impossible to pretend he didn’t see him. 

They stared at each other. All around them, students and teachers streamed up and down the hallway, nodding goodbyes to Mister Graves, slurping down jumbo coffees, hurrying towards the school doors. 

Mister Graves came to a stop - slowly, leather satchel dangling from his shoulder, jacket hooked around his finger and slung over his shoulder against the heat. 

_No, not Mister Graves. Percival._

Once the last bell rang, he was always Percival. 

Theseus smirked, and closed the distance between them, a scribbled notebook in his hand that could easily pass as math homework in need of a check. He forced his features in his patented Good Boy, A Plus Student face: honest eyes, dimples bracketing his lips, eager to learn. 

Percival saw right through it, and rolled his eyes. It only made Theseus’s smirk grow. 

He stopped in front of the teacher, the hallway already half-desert. Percival had to discreetly tilt his head back to look him in the face. Theseus was ready to bet fifty bucks he was figuring out if he should try to push past him and shoulder his way to the front doors, because under his silk shirts and waistcoats with mother-of-pearl buttons, Percival Graves’s arms were corded with muscles. 

In the end, though, he didn’t push past him. Seemed to judge it a useless waste of energy. Instead he breathed out a sigh, and leaned back against the row of lockers lining the wall, arms crossed. 

“Don’t you have anything better to do than showing me homework you have no need of help with, Scamander?” His thick eyebrows knit in a frown. There was a smile pulling at his lips, too. “Besides, shouldn’t you be at practice?” 

The answer was, yes, Theseus had practice, but no, he shouldn’t be there. Not yet. He still had half an hour before he had to be on the field - twenty-nine minutes and fifteen seconds, according to the timer he set on his cell. 

He had timed this. Perfectly. 

“Three months,” he said. “Ninety-one days and one night.” 

He fought to keep his voice casual, despite the heart hammering against his ribs. 

Percival was still frowning. But at least he didn’t pretend not to know what he was talking about. Theseus saw him debating it in his eyes, the strategies flitting across the clever cogs of Percival Graves’s mind; he was suddenly able to see the tension in his shoulders, the worried line of his lips. 

“Scamander,” Percival warned, voice cautious. “Theseus.” 

Theseus felt his chest tighten at the name, that drowning man joy that only Percival brought him. _God, his name, on his lips._ He took that joy, and pinned it carefully to the folders of his memory, for later contemplation, for later heartache in the shadows of his room. Then he moved closer, crowding Percival’s space. 

“In three months, I’ll be eighteen,” Theseus whispered, the words melting away in the low rustle of people around them. “In less than two months, I won’t be your student anymore. We’ll just be two people who know each other. Who want to spend time with each other. Who want to-” 

“Theseus,” Percival replied. _Hissed_ , one hand shifting upward, brushing at his elbow. “Not like this, not here-” 

“Yes, Percival,” Theseus interrupted. He didn’t give him time to react, and in a single seamless motion he pushed him against the wall at his back - his strength a graceful wall of skin and muscle between Percival and the hallway. The empty space between them felt charged like compressed energy. “Like _this_ , and _here_. Now, or you’ll run, and we won’t talk about it till the year ends and you leave me behind.” 

At this, Percival’s face had a spasm - grew sharper. He tilted his chin. Theseus was the one nearly pinning him to the wall, but Percival’s stare felt like a blade pressed against his throat. 

“ _Kid_ ,” Percival said, knowing he hated the name, using it for that exact reason “don’t push it. I’m your teacher; you’re my student. I am thirty-five, and you’re not even eighteen. You’re bright and handsome, Theseus, but you can’t change that. Nothing will, ever, change, that.” 

“Bullshit.” Theseus’s hands splayed against the wall at Percival’s back - enclosing him in the space between them. “Forgive me, Percival, but I call bullshit. You can’t not feel it.” He sighed. “You can’t not feel _this_.” 

“I can and will help you with your cover letter,” Percival said. He pushed one hand against Theseus’s bicep, gently: making sure not to touch a single strip of bare skin. “But that’s all I can do for you.” 

Theseus stiffened under his touch. He took a breath, deep and slow, skin stretching and shifting under Percival’s fingers, and leaned in. Lips too close to his ear to be a friendly whisper, to be anything but what it was, what was on the cusp to become. 

“What about what I can do for you?” Theseus cocked his head to the side. “You never said anything about that.” 

Percival said nothing - but before he started pushing against him again, he hesitated. There were whole worlds in that hesitation. 

Theseus let his lips feather down Percival’s neck, hover over his pulse. “I can do many things for you, Percival Graves,” he murmured, “but say no, say no once and for all, and I’ll step back. I’ll leave you alone, forever.” 

Theseus heard him swallow a gasp. The vein under his lips fluttered. “We can’t,” Percival breathed. 

“ _We can’t_ is not a _no_ ,” Theseus replied, equally softly. “Correct, sir?” 

A shift. Percival closed his eyes. “Correct, Mister Scamander.” 

The words seemed to cost him. Theseus pulled back, arms still flat against either side of Percival. Everything smelled like cologne and coffee. He flicked his eyes down his teacher’s face. He looked beautiful, all clean-cut lines and black brushstrokes, and pained, and pale with defeat. It left Theseus aching, in his bones, in his teeth. It left him wanting to shift his head and press his lips on his. 

_I’ll show you,_ he promises to the Percival in his head, as he took a step back, and let him go. _I won’t hurt you. I promise._

_I’ll show you how good it can be._

The corridor echoed with sudden silence. After a moment, Percival opened his eyes. 

“Now you really have to go to practice, Theseus.” 

His voice still sounded rough - but careful. Theseus found himself fighting the blush creeping up his neck. 

“Yes - yes, I do.” 

He took another step back. He debated it with himself for a heartbeat, and then couldn’t help himself. 

“If you ever want to come to the game, Mister Graves, you’re more than welcome.” 

Percival’s gaze turned cutting. Pushing himself off the wall, he was in front of Theseus before he could realize it. “As if I have never been there,” he whispered. 

Theseus had the time to glimpse the ghost of a smirk. Then Percival turned, and strolled down the hallway. The teachers’ lounge’s door clicked closed behind him. 

By the time he remembered how to breathe, Theseus’s blush had flooded his whole face - burning on the tip of his ears hot enough to singe hair. 

He laughed - hard and goofy, in the middle of the freaking school. 

He ran the whole way to practice, and it felt like flying. 

*** 

“You’re playing a very dangerous game,” Seraphina said, not looking up from the civics test spread on the table before her. “You know that, right?” 

Percival started, his steaming coffee sloshing dangerously in his hand. He actually had to cover the cup lid with his free fingers to keep it from spilling on his legs and ruining the slacks of his Armani suit. 

He glared at his best friend, watching her stab the test in red felt pen. 

They knew each other too well for him to ask her what she was talking about, and for her to be wrong about it. 

“I’m not playing any game, Phina,” he said instead. “If anything, I’m the one who’s been played with.” 

Seraphina crossed out another wrong answer. She plucked a fry from her plate and munched on it, eyes still on the paper. “Oh, I do know that Percy. Kid is persistent… and way less subtle than he probably thinks he is.” 

Percival froze. “Good lord, is it _that_ obvious?” 

“Yep.” 

He gave a pained moan. Despite the soothing mid-morning quiet of the cafeteria, he felt the pinch of an incoming migraine at the back of his skull. “Crap.” He sighed. “I’m not - I’m not a saint, Phina, but I’m not a sick sonabitch either. I don’t want people to think I’d try anything with a kid. God, I don’t want them to think I would force him, or worse, I-” 

“Percival,” she interrupted. “Before stitching scarlet letters all over your fancy jackets in shame, listen to me. It _shows_ \- but only to those who know you well to see past your society mask, which basically means me. And second of all.” She slid another fry out of her ketchup-covered pile.“I doubt anybody would take a look at you and Scamander, and think it’s about anything but mutual attraction.” 

Percival stole a panicked glance at the rest of the cafeteria, eyes frenziedly scanning tables and sleepy faces. His migraine gave a jolt. “Maybe I should get you a megaphone,” he spat out, once he was sure no teacher or student was running out to grab a pitchfork and punish the crib-thief. “I’m not sure they heard you all the way to the fucking dean’s office.” 

“Don’t be _dramatic_. It’s ten in the morning - everyone here is either grading tests they should have graded days ago, or skipping classes. They’re not interested in your love life, or in the lack of it.” Seraphina gave a shrug; tapped at his forgotten coffee, knowing how much he loved it scorching hot and hated it cold. 

“Still,” Percival said, “there is no mutual attraction. I’m his teacher, and he’s my student. My _underage_ student. If I hear of something like that, I’ll have the motherfucker messing with a kid with his ass in court before he can say Lolita.” A pause – long enough to hurt. “I mean, I’d have. I would have him in court.” 

Seraphina stopped wolfing down her disgusting midmorning meal. She finally met his eyes, and Percival almost wished she didn’t - because her gaze was too soft. 

“Percival, forgive me, but you can’t see you guys together - the way you act around each other. You just, drift towards each other, like magnets. There _is_ attraction. Mutual, healthy attraction.” 

Percival shook his head. He pressed his fingertips against the Styrofoam cup of his coffee, ignoring his thudding pulse, his headache, and was pleased when he felt them hurt from the heat. “No, there isn’t.” 

“He looks at you like you’re made of sunlight and candies. And you-” 

“No,” Percival said again, but it wasn’t anger that trembled in his voice. He felt his heartbeat echo in his throat. “Please, Phina – drop it. Just drop it.” 

Surprisingly, Phina did. She also leaned across the table, closing her silver-laquered nails over his arm and giving a squeeze. The look on her face nearly transformed her, neardly undid him. 

Never before he had truly realized how worry she still was about him. 

“Whatever you want, Percival,” she said. “But just… Just consider Theseus is not a kid. Not in the sense you mean it.” 

Percival frowned. He drew back from her touch, every inch of skin stiffening. “What the hell does that mean?” 

“It means he’s not a child. He’s a young man, a _very_ young man, sure - but definitely not a child. I’m just his civics teacher, but he seems perfectly able to think his thoughts, and feel the things he feels. And realize whom he feels them for.” 

Percival flicked his eyes away. “He’s seventeen, Phina. It’s probably - it’s just a passing crush. We’ve all been there. But it’s so not what he needs. He should find a good girl of his age - or a good boy, or a good person, but someone as fresh and young as he is. Someone he can go to the prom with, take home to his parents-” 

“-and have a bunch of all-American babies with after they get married during grad school,” Seraphina cut in, the sharp sarcasm in her tone almost welcomed. “Don’t underestimate Scamander, Percival. He deserves better than fitting your nice little stereotypical boxes. Stop acting as if everyone’s a stupider version of you, okay?” 

At this, despite the clenching in his chest and his skull, Percival arched his eyebrow. Seraphina rolled her eyes in response. If Percival couldn’t deny the truth of her accusation of hubris, she was as guilty as he was. He and Phina had been sworn enemies, best friends and favorite allies since they were eleven - most of the times all three things together - and competition was still one of their best-loved hobbies. They operated in slightly different fields - Percival favoring the clean elegance of exact science, and Seraphina forever besotted with the headache of law and political science - but they were made of the same stuff. The same pathologically competitive, arrogant stuff. 

Which was part of the reason her opinion held the weight it did. Crap. 

“Fair enough,” Seraphina finally conceded. “But my point stands.” 

“Which is?” 

“Which is, you’re allowed to feel attracted to people, Graves. To want those things, if the person in question is perfectly aware and willing, even if you never act on it.” 

Percival swallowed hard enough to feel his Adam’s Apple rattle with it. They were circling around it, circling closer and closer, to the thing they never talked about, the thing that Seraphina had seen one cold January morning and Percival saw every time he closed his eyes. “You’re saying I should just get it on with a high-schooler?” he asked, because babbling was easier, because it made the circling slower. 

Seraphina turned her squeeze into a punch to his arm. “No, you idiot. It’d be a public relations nightmare, and pretty damn wrong from an ethical point of view. But in a few years, in time…there would be nothing wrong with it.” 

“You want me to get laid this bad?” Percival wondered, with a touch of real puzzlement in his tone. He was so curious he forgot to keep his voice low. 

A second punch. Harder. “I want to see you happy. _Living your life_ .” Seraphina’s face was tight with something which looked like anger but wasn’t it. When he forced himself to meet them, Phina’s hazel eyes were burning. “That ugly fucker didn’t take your life, Percival. Please remember that.” 

For a moment, Percival couldn’t breathe _. Yes,_ came the thought, _he did,_ and then, _almost_. The cafeteria table turned rubbery under his fingers. He tasted blood on his tongue, heard the wet hiss of skin parting under the pressure of a knife, the red and blue lights flashing against his eyelids. 

_He_ didn’t take his life, but came close to. Very close. Seraphina knew it better than anyone else. She had been there, holding his parents out of the ER room, while the docs tried to keep his heart from stopping. 

He didn’t realize how cold he was till Phina pushed the still-steaming cup back into his hands. He took a deep breath, and then a second one. 

_He almost took it, but didn’t._

“Need anything?” she asked, tone casual. No _you okay_ , or _I’m sorry_ , or tears. That just wouldn’t be them. 

“No,” Percival answered. It took him slightly longer than usual. “No, I’m good. Really.” 

“Mh,” grunted Seraphina, and went back to her fries and the test she had butchered her way through. The test’s owner was going to spend a very uncomfortable ten minutes, poor bastard. 

“Phina?” 

“Mh?” she hummed. Her felt pen crossed out another answer. 

“Thank you.” 

“You’re welcome, Graves.” 

Percival hid his smile in a sip of coffee. It faltered, though, and not only because the coffee proved two steps shy of lukewarm. 

“Promise me you’ll tell me if I fuck this up, please.” 

Seraphina’s eyes zoomed in on him. 

“I promise if you fuck up with this, I’m going to kick your ass all the way back to New York, Percival.” She shook her head, sending her short white curl swirl around her cheeks. “And if Scamander fucks you up more than he’s already doing, then I’m going to have his ass, too.” 

Percival didn’t laugh, because he had no doubt she meant every word. 


End file.
